There’s no shortage of audio players these days: even free ones offer solid sets of features and attractive UIs. However, choosing the right one still depends mostly on personal preferences. GOM Audio, the young sibling of GOM Media Player is a newcomer in the audio player software niche, but has lots to offer, from simple intuitive usage to advanced settings to please a wide range of users.
Installation & Requirements
The GOM Audio setup offers only the standard configuration and even if the program is free, there are no bundled ads, toolbars or other third-party applications. GOM Audio supports most popular audio formats, specifically CDs, MP3, M4A, OGG, WMA, WAV, MID, FLAC, APE and PLS. This is a small application with low memory footprint so its hardware requirements are lower than the ones of supported operating systems (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8).
Interface
GOM Audio’s sleek appearance offers a clean view of tabbed playlists, currently selected song and standard functions and options. By default, the music info box displays general information about the program’s capabilities.
The playlist area with tab support located below the standard play controls, has its own context menu where playlist management options as well as information about the currently selected file are available.
The main menu of the program is the context menu that appears via right mouse click in the Visualizer area, which has three different viewing modes. Here, all the standard playback, volume, repeat and shuffle functions are present, but also GOM Audio’s settings under Preferences, Power Options and Streaming Broadcast (a list of some popular Internet Radio stations).
The 10-band equalizer comes with built-in presets and advanced users can manually adjust particular frequencies and even save their custom presets. Users can also change Master and Wave volume and in the Controls tab A-B repeat settings and tempo modifications are available.
Power options offer the possibility to exit the player, PC shutdown and sleep after a certain period, at a user-defined hour or when the playlist ends. GOM Audio’s Preferences are clearly designed with power users in mind, since an extended list of settings is available for multiple aspects of the player, from display, update and skins to file type associations, keyboard shortcuts, plugins and DSP.
Pros
– Clean, readable interface with three Visualizer display modes.
– 10-band Equalizer with built-in presets and manual tweak option for demanding users.
– Tabbed playlist.
– Power options let users schedule application exit or computer shutdown/sleep at a certain time or when the playlist ends.
– Support is enabled for skins.
– DSP settings offer the option to manually adjust reverb, surround and normalize.
Cons
– No skins are available except the two included within the application.
– Playlist tabs cannot be rearranged.
– Playback queue functionality is not provided.
Alternatives
– foobar2000
– AIMP
Conclusion
Still new among the oversized crowd of free audio players, GOM Audio goes easy on system resources and brings plenty of features to the table to indulge power users. Beginners can also use it with little effort since it works well with default settings too.
